Gordon Brown's new image masseurs got something unexpected out of yesterday's prime ministerial press conference, even if no one else did.

If you want to elicit brisk, or even playful, answers from Brown, ask him about sex — or Carla Bruni.

Up to now this wasn't in the Brown Presbyterian Playbook, where the index lists sex as "what the coal comes in".

But it lightened our 70-minute ordeal twice yesterday, four times if you count tabloid teasing over Harriet Harman's fetching little stab vest. We were all very grateful.

Yesterday's official agenda was the global economy and what Team Brown is doing to rescue planet Earth from those crazy bankers.

All good stuff, but mumble, mumble mumble. No sooner had a reporter tried something else, immigration, the Olympics or cannabis, than he was off again: mumbling for Britain.

If Mrs Thatcher was matron and John Major that nice bus conductor on the No 63, Tony Blair was an upmarket estate agent.

But Brown is a hellfire preacher whose media handlers have told him to go easy on the hellfire stuff because it reduces the Sunday collection.

He knows we're all doomed, lazy bastards who don't start work until after breakfast. But he can't say so yet. The strain must be awful.

Yesterday Brown remembered to smile periodically, even when questions annoyed him: overwatch in Basra, cheaper mortgages, a "stake in the future" for every Afghan … out poured the familiar phrases.

When a French television reporter asked (smirk, smirk) if "French savoir faire" might help solve problems at Terminal 5, the railways and binge drinking, he manfully shared the joke.

But where was the story? Questioners became more desperate. At 12.48, shortly after a BBC producer fell asleep, someone asked if Nick Clegg's love life, as related to QC magazine, was a good example of the new candour?

The room tensed. Would we finally hear his side of that student fling with the Romanian princess, the one who tired of waiting for Gordon to come home from political meetings?

No, we wouldn't. Clegg "taught me another lesson: not to talk about these things at all," replied Brown.

At least it was brief, probably the same answer he gave the Romanian princess when she asked if he'd like another red tie for his birthday.

Later a smoothie from Fox News, the Murdoch cable channel, asked Brown if his kind remarks about Barack Obama amounted to an endorsement?

Gordon praised Hillary, Barack, John McCain and even George Bush so warmly — and equally — that we believed him.

Just at that moment jet fighters roared over Whitehall. Has Rupert bought Fox News its own air force, we wondered? No. Gordon explained that the Red Arrows were marking the RAF's 90th, before lapsing into reform of the IMF. Mumble, mumble.

Time passed. The PM ignored the Sun's question about Hattie Harman wearing a stab vest in Peckham. But when he accidentally called the Daily Mail he was asked again. She did right, said Brown before moving to praise neighbourhood policing. Mumble, mumble.

This was desperate. Then 60 minutes in, a crafty Spaniard asked what Sarah Brown had said about "your passionate kiss" with Sarko's wife, Carla Bruni.

Strange to report, the bashful one beamed at the memory of his "very popular visitor" whom he — Sarah, too — looks forward to meeting again.

Then, remembering where he was, he mysteriously added "British reserve". It was quite sweet. The masseurs should work on that.